Orange rays, gentle wafts upon the cheek announced the last days of summer. The bees and vivid leaves were gone. I turned and left the garden one last time, and so too does this blog come to an end.

It took a while but this is my last, bittersweet update. Since November 2012 I have been (slowly) tracking my progress in a deeply involving hobby. Ideally I would continue this blog, but posts take a long time to create and most importantly I no longer live in the vicinity of any gardening space. I hope my experiences have proven to be informative, and in the best case inspiring. I might come back to this one day, just not right now.

Without further adieu, behold the last garden at its peak. I did not plant in the winter so luckily I have only one garden to catch up on. I really went balls out, although it feels like I say that every year...

At the time I didn't realize I was moving. I spent the winter time focusing on things that were incredibly time consuming but were supposed to provide lasting benefits for future gardens. The main prep involved building trellises and improving the soil. I continued my efforts from the year before and spent countless weekends gathering and mixing compost to increase the organic matter and raise the level of the beds. Special thanks to the LA mulching program and Griffith Park for its free and endless supply. After I mixed enough and groomed the beds I spread wood chips (also from Griffith) over the pathways. This prevents mud buildup on my sandals when the dirt is wet, and also looks nice.

Trellises for my pole beans and melons from 2x3's, Simpson wood connectors, and chicken wire from Home Depot. I fastened the wire to the wood using u-shaped staples.

I've used rock dust in the past to no discernible benefit. This year's snake oil to improve the soil was biochar, a fancy name for the plain old wood char that can be found at the bottom of a fire pit. It is given the biochar term because char is naturally extremely porous with huge amounts of internal surface area, theoretically creating an excellent habitat for beneficial bacteria when used in the garden. Biochar works much like expanded carbon filters and retains water, nutrients, and minerals that would otherwise be leached from the soil. It has grown in popularity ever since the discovery that ancient Amazonian civilizations cultivated incredibly fertile soil on otherwise infertile land, much of which is attributed to the high levels of granulated wood char found within the top several feet of the soil strata. Look up terra preta if you are interested.

The picture shows how I made biochar using a simple TLUD, a top-lid updraft stove, using coffee cans with holes drilled in the bottom. The idea is to limit the amount of oxygen for the burn which prevents ash build up and maximizes the char produced per batch. Since my stove was so small it was quite inefficient. Many people dig giant pits or use 50 gallon drums.

Again, I saw no discernible benefit. However, proponents say that it takes about a year for the biochar to fully activate as it gathers microorganisms and sucks up nutrients. Frankly, I won't know if it works unless I come back to my garden space in the future. At the very least, there wasn't any discernible detriment either.

This is interesting. I was given an industry grade corn variety where... this happened. Poor pollination, not an issue I've ever encountered with corn. My guess is this variety is adapted for farmland where the fields are huge and pollen is plentiful. Next time I'll stick with a garden variety.

Some notes on the tomato patches. Among the varieties included Sun Sugar, Berkeley Tie Dye, and Pineapple. This part of the garden is usually productive but there are persistent problems that show up every year. Some, like spider mites, I've found are almost impossible to prevent and treat. Others I have theories about how to fix if only I had one more growing season. Cracking of the skin has been a common problem for me, which I suspect is due to a calcium deficiency. If so, this can be remedied with an amendment like bone meal. I also most likely used too much magnesium sulfate this year, causing blossom end rot in many of the early tomatoes. So yea, don't do that. Magnesium sulfate is commonly known as Epsom salt, however adding too much prevents the plant from absorbing other beneficial nutrients.

This little bugger is called a Mexican Sour Gherkin, a tiny cucumber that looks like a watermelon. It lives up to its name with some strong sour notes. I have also learned it is not very good for pickling. At the very least a conversation starter, because who doesn't want to know about obscure cucumber varieties?

One of the few successful watermelons from the fray of disaster. The variety in the picture is Alibaba, but I also planted Orangeglo, Yellow Moon and Stars, Carolina Cross 183, and Sherbert to little avail. Like the corn, I had pollination issues in the form of deformed fruits or no fruit at all. Too few bees? Too hot? My current opinion is there is lack of cross pollination compatibility between the different varieties. In fact, this may be the very reason I've never gotten many watermelons in any of my seasons. It sounds stupidly simple when I think about it, but for best results I suggest planting many watermelons of the same variety at a given time.

To top it off my melons suffered, as they do every year, from sudden wilt. The plants do great through fruit set and a certain level of fruit maturity, but then the leaves go limp and curl up unexpectedly almost overnight. From what I understand it is not a single disease, but a series of multiple pathogens that work in conjunction to produce the symptoms. I kept hoping that improving the soil with compost would diminish the effects. Unfortunately, the only solution seems to be avoiding planting melons altogether for a few years and wait for the disease to go away, as they can lie dormant in the soil for long periods of time.

Many muskmelons are not susceptible to sudden wilt, so my other melon crop was quite good. The picture above is a Spanish Piel de Sapo variety called Lambkin. It's one of my favorites, up there with the Japanese melon which is saying a lot. It has excellent sweetness and a firm texture.

French Charentais variety called Alvaro. Although touted as one of the best tasting melons, I found the flesh to be a little dry, the meat not as sweet as the green varieties.

An interesting honeydew variety called Snow Leopard. Honeydews need a long growing time, but like the watermelon the plant is vulnerable to sudden wilt and died while the fruit was still on the vine. It wasn't bad, but it probably could have been much better.

When making this post I noticed I had fewer pictures to work with than previous years. Not that it's blase, but growing the same things does lose its novelty. I do wish I took more progress shots though. This is the only picture of the Japanese melons I grew. They look much worse than those sold in Japan, but I contend they taste just as good.

An example of bug damage. Once the rind is pierced bacteria are allowed to enter and the flesh inside rots quickly.

I combat this by adding a tile under the fruit. Bugs like dark, confined spaces such as the soil underneath a melon. Once you take that away they seem to stop bothering the fruit.

Some final notes for those interested in gardening:
- www.rareseeds.com - an excellent seed catalog where I get some of my favorite varieties. Others include Burpee, Johnny's Seeds, Kitazawa Seed Company, and Territorial Seed Company.
- want to know how to grow a certain plant? Search for "growing ___" and plenty of resources will pop up. I tend to prefer the articles published under a university's agriculture department. Youtube also is a treasure trove of information.
- essential tools for me include: a hand pump sprayer, shovel, hand pruner, garden fork, hand weeder, and garden rake.
- other essential items are trellises (I build mine), a wheelbarrow, and a large soil sifter (also custom built).
- diluted milk spray during full sunlight is a great fungicide for powdery mildew. No, serious.
- the biggest problems in your garden life will be pests and disease. Prevention is the best medicine, and the precautions needed vary from plant to plant.
- some of the easiest things to grow are lettuce, arugula, zucchini, green onion, and tomatoes. All are fast growing, have high yield, have low maintenance, and have few vulnerabilities to pests or disease. On top of that the same produce in stores is disproportionately expensive for the amount of work it takes, and is nowhere near the quality.
- if you're cheap or hate yourself, start everything from seed.

Not much else to say. Gardening has been a big part of my life the last few years and I hate to see it go, but in the end it is just a hobby and life moves on. I'm always asked how I got into it and I have no definitive answer, other than I slowly got more involved the more I learned. What started out as a tiny garden some twenty years ago, growing the smallest carrots and radishes imaginable with my dad, has exponentially accelerated to where I am today. Gardening gets you outside and in touch with your immediate environment. It produces fresh, chemical-free food for you, your family, and anyone you choose to share it with. It provides an understanding and appreciation for just how difficult it is to cultivate something so fundamental to our survival. Humans have grown food for millennia, I believe there is something primal ingrained in us that lends it such a deep satisfaction. Every fruit picked a victory, every sprouting plant a wonder. The sun reflects off the waxy leaves of hard work and determination. Goodbye, friends. It was fun!

"Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are." - Alfred Austin

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden." - Thomas Jefferson

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles form the corn field." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man." - George Washington

Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2015

I know ya'll were at the edge of your seats waiting for my next update... well here it is! The summer is over and the plants are dead or dying. Now that I don't have to spend time maintaining the garden, I can use it to recap all the goings on the past few months.

The weather this year was relatively mild until late August and September where it got blisteringly hot. I planted in the beginning of June, but I really should have planted around late April. Maintenance was straightforward except for some bug stuff. I really didn't need to do much after the seeds were planted, just some weeding and spraying. This year was successful in many ways it has never been before. I implemented many new things and the efforts have shown, for the most part. Every time I get closer to the perfect garden, but I'm not quite there yet.

Starting from the end of last year's summer season I decided I had enough of poor soil. I spent many weekends leading up to plant time digging, mixing, and filling large chunks of the backyard with enriched soil by using countless bags of compost taken from LA's free mulch dump sites. I dimensioned and dug out blocks of soil, mixed in about 50% new compost by volume, and further enriched it with rock dust at 1/4 lb per square foot and slow release fertilizer pellets.

The idea was to improve the soil texture and aeration with the compost, add back depleted minerals with the rock dust, and provide some macronutrients (N-P-K) with the pellets. After barely finishing the soil part, I repaired and realigned the irrigation system. Was all the effort worth it? I probably shouldn't think about it.

The garden around its peak time. There is always one plant that refuses to grow and this year it was soy beans. Soy bean seeds expire fast, but fortunately a single plant sprouted from which I will replenish my legacy seed bank. Other than that, everything else grew quite well.

I tried my hand at making compost tea this year. It is not technically a fertilizer, but is still used to benefit and improve plant health. Essentially, compost tea is supposed to be an extremely high concentration of beneficial bacteria suspended in liquid, the same bacteria that resides in compost. The process of making tea involves inoculating water with the bacteria and catalyzing their growth using sugar and oxygenation. Once the tea is ready it can be poured into the root zone or sprayed on the leaves.

The first step is to dechlorinate the water. The first time I made it I left the water out for a week, but after that I started using aquarium dechlorinator.

Once the water is ready compost is added, along with a few tablespoons of unsulfered molasses. The type of compost I used is worm castings, ie worm poop.

The water is oxygenated using an aquarium pump for 2-3 days, after which the tea should be ready. The worm castings can be bought at a garden store, the dechlorinator, pump, and molasses I got at Walmart. Making tea is not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

After the tea is made you are supposed to dilute it to the color of a light tea. Mine seemed like it was already that color so I used it straight. I poured a few cups directly onto the roots and used the rest as a foliar spray. Hardcore gardeners are always raving about compost tea, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if I noticed anything at all. Perhaps I didn't make it right. The bucket and aeration tubes were covered in an algae-like film so I knew that at least something was growing in there.

Compost tea or not, the dragonfruit had their best year thus far, to a point where it was difficult to keep up with its production. I pulled 50-60 fruits this season, which is much better than last year's 25 and the single fruit the year before that.

Dragonfruit flowers only bloom for a single night, after which they wilt and dry. For one brief moment it is actually very pretty.

The taste is pretty mild, but every now and then you get a really sweet one. I find them quite refreshing.

This year was a great year for melons. I was finally able to grow the Japanese Shizuoka melon and Yubari melon that have so eluded me all this time, not to mention a few watermelons.

The melons were soft and very sweet. They may not have looked as nice, but they tasted just as good as anything I had in Japan. This time around I made sure to manage the watering and to regularly spray the leaves with diluted milk to stave off powdery mildew. The extra effort paid off well.

My watermelons experienced a bit of bad luck. I opened my single orangeglo to find that it was rotten inside, the source of which was a hole I had thought healed over. It looks as though bacteria was able to get through and infect the rest of the fruit. Luckily, this wasn't the only watermelon I had.

One of the pickings I had. I think this one shows a good range of what I grew this year. Not everything came in at the same time.

I grew okra this year and it turned out to be one of my best plants. The fruits need to be picked at around 4" otherwise they start to get hard and woody. The plants grow up to 6', so have room if you ever decide to grow them.

I left out a lot of things but these are the highlights from this year's crop. In the meantime, I plan to cut down on the winter gardening quite a bit and only plant a few lettuces. I do not have the time to maintain it and also I want to cut the seasonal memory of all the harmful bugs that come my way. Hopefully laying the dirt fallow will disrupt the cycle of bugs that have built up in my yard. What this means is I may not update in a long time, but I'm sure you'll manage somehow. Until then, happy gardening!

Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Hello! My last post was over half a year ago but I haven't forgotten about this place, nor have I stopped gardening. Studying for the engineering license test ate up a significant amount of time and I've been backlogged ever since. A lot has happened in the past seven months and I am already well into the summer crop, however before I get into that I should first conclude the tale of the winter garden.

Only remnants remain of the past season. This year was decent, but as always there were some obstacles to contend with. The weather was strangely warm even during large parts of Winter. Also my plants experienced an influx of bugs unlike anything I've seen before. More on that later.

The pictures above were taken in the middle of February, three and a half months after planting. The problem with starting in November is that the plants spend their most important growth stages in the middle of Winter, which has the coldest temperatures and shortest days. This slows growth substantially, and I have a feeling it also acclimates them to the colder weather, causing premature bolting when Spring rolls around. The ideal planting time would be September, where the warmer weather and longer days promote much faster growth. By the time Winter comes the plants are mature enough to start seeding or forming florets, but the cold temperatures slow or inhibit the bolting process. This is all, of course, speculation.

Just after half a month later the plants are noticeably bigger. Larger plants are able to withstand colder temperatures better and around this time Spring was just starting to peak its head, thus the plants grew much faster. The size and symmetry of this part of the garden is due in big part to the little caps that were placed around the plants when they were seedlings. Not allowing bugs to eat the leaves makes a huge difference.

The peas were simultaneously a failure and a success. The plants got so large and so tall that they collapsed under their own weight. You know you're great at growing peas when you get no peas at all.

Despite the setback, I was still able to scrounge up a few pods. This year I was able to pull more sugar snaps than snow peas, which is unusual.

The daikon were the most vigorous plants in the garden. They got so big they started pushing themselves out of the soil. I underestimated just how much room they take up, but that didn't seem to stop them. Daikon can be pickled to make takuan, boiled in soups and stews, or grated as a condiment.

Maribor hybrid kale. I planted a few new varieties this year but this one was the most striking. It is also the slowest growing and smallest of the kales. Go figure.

Romanesco, which was a very successful floret crop. Tastes what it looks like, a cross between cauliflower and broccoli. Luckily, they weren't so infested with bugs as these types of plants are prone to be.

Sadly, this is the biggest broccoli I was able to pull. Every year I try to grow broccoli but it never pans out. The plants tend to grow too tall and fall over, or bolt before the heads get any larger. I used to think it didn't matter where the seeds I used came from, but I'm beginning to suspect I would have more success with seeds from a boutique company like I did with the Romanesco rather than places like Home Depot.

This was the season of bugs. Visible is a swiss cheese array of holes in the Asian cabbages, with the cole cabbages faring little better. As mentioned in the previous post, a big chunk of my sprouts were thoroughly chewed through almost the day I planted them. Every year the bugs come earlier, in greater numbers, and with seemingly more aggressive tendencies. Growing things yourself, you begin to see the importance of pesticides and GMOs. I don't think they deserve the reputation they have.

This year I planted Purple Haze carrots. They have really interesting coloration and were very sweet, almost addicting to eat raw. The one mistake I made was planting them too close to the daikon, whose large leaves blocked most of the sun. Spacing plants has always been an issue with me. They just look so far away from each other when they're sprouts!

Some new lettuce varieties I'm trying, Mottistone and Merlot. Lettuce is the easiest plant to grow, which is why they get the part of the garden with the least amount of sunlight. Bugs tend to avoid them and they reproduce like crazy, making lettuce one of the best beginner plants. I always have to shake my head when I see $10 salads. They're just leaves, people.

A tomato plant growing out of the cracks of the tumbler. Super cool, but unfortunately I had to pull the plant, lest it get too large and pry the panels apart.

There you have it, the winter garden in a nutshell. Currently I am busy maintaining the summer crop, of which I have a lot to say. Things are going well so far and I'll try to post again soon. I hope this blog is somewhat inspiring and just slightly informative. Winter crops are hard. I am constantly amazed at how stores so effortlessly stock pristine, bugless, uniform, consistent produce day after day and at such great value! It's a miracle, actually. It constantly puts my stuff to shame but I try. Oh, how I try.

Date: Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Hello, and Merry Christmas!
Have you see the sun today?
It lays too softly upon the ground
Reluctantly sending down its warmth
To feeble plants with tender leaves
And angel roots below the earth

Wood is pale in the afternoon
The lifeless tones of neutral light
A soundless song wafts through the air
Winter has come and brace yourselves
For the touch of dirt is now bitter work
And I cannot stay outside too long

Something about this little plant
That sits and fights the frost and rain
I gaze upon it from afar
Behind double insulated glass
A blast of warm air down my spine
Watching the plant grab at the sky

Hi there. So good to see you. The cold season is here and that means time for leafy plants, roots, bulbs, and tubers. Everything was planted at the beginning of November. I am now in the thinning stages just waiting for things to get bigger. Let us have a look.

The garden was planted using the planter configuration as last year. Most of the prepping time was spent mixing in bag after bag of compost. Seeing the amended soil made me realize just how poor it used to be, both in texture and nutrition. The soil is now light, moisture retentive, and dark. Before it used to be a light brown sand.

As stated before, most of the hard labor was dumping big piles of compost and tilling it in with a fork. I then groomed the soil with a garden rake and created the rows with a spade. Pictures demonstrating the process would have been helpful. I have received comments that this is the nicest looking preparation I have had so far. All this work comes at the cost of time. You can tell I had high hopes going into this.

The rows are dark because I filled it with a seed starter mix of peat moss, sifted compost, and some rock dust. I made it myself. It seems to work okay.

So far most of the plants are chugging along well enough. Every year I try new things and have to work out the bugs, not to mention dealing with natures fun little obstacles. The results thus far are below:

In the space to the left of the planter box are six varieties of lettuces and a row of arugula. In the box I have mizuna, red scallions, mitsuba, cilantro, parsley, dill, carrots, spinach mustard, and the existing rainbow chard. This is by far the most diverse box. The circular things are dome cup caps, which I am using to keep out the bugs. It has only been a week but they seem like they work. I don't need the caps everywhere because some plants the bugs leave alone.

In the back are some poor to do purple beauty bell peppers left from the summer season. In the middle are red and green Romaine lettuce varieties. In the front is red iceberg lettuce, which is surprisingly hard to sprout. Half of the plants never grew.

The spinach patch, or whatever is left of it. You are looking at the survivors of a sprout apocalypse. Almost all my spinach was eaten by something. I had replanted several times before running out of seeds.

Potato plants, which I started from spuds I bought from the grocery store. Potatoes are interesting because the tubers grow upwards. To get the highest yields requires occasionally mounding soil around the plant higher and higher as new potatoes grow towards the surface.

The root patch, with carrots, daikon, burdock, and celery. A newcomer, the daikon was the first to sprout and is the most vigorous plant in the garden. The burdock, on the other hand, had a hard time germinating. Easy, my ass. Half the celery was eaten. I wish the garden was less patchy but it is what it is.

The cole crops with a perimeter of bulb onions. Here I am growing cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, gai lan, and Brussels sprouts. Bugs love cole crops, so I capped all of them. I will remove the caps once the plants get bigger.

Peas in the back with Chinese cabbages in the front. My biggest mistake was not capping these plants. I had initially planted only the strongest cabbages I had started from trays, but literally overnight they were eaten up. After that I planted whatever leftovers I had. My expectations are pretty low for this area.

A funny thing about gardening is after a while it will grow whether you want it or not. Seeds tend to get everywhere, and I am constantly finding uninvited, but tasty, stragglers.

This sweet potato plant, sprouted from kitchen discards and left for compost. It obviously had other ideas in mind.

This tomato plant, which has its seasons confused. It will die soon.

This wild arugula, which is nice to have while the planted arugula matures.

And these wild watermelons. Back when it was warmer these were the healthiest plants I've ever seen, healthier than those I intentionally set. Now that its colder and the days are shorter, they aren't doing so well. I let them grow just to see how far they could go.

Whether these watermelons are any good is to be seen. Some of the daikon were pulled out during the thinning process. They look good enough to eat. I'm sure there's something you can do with them.

I'll try to post more updates, but it is getting tougher as the season gets colder. Happy holidays to all, and I shall see you next year!

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